What Does 2 Chronicles 11:20 Mean?
And after her he took Maachah, daughter of Absalom, who bore him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And after her he took Maachah the daughter of Absalom; which bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith.THE KEY
Absalom and Shelomith share the ש־ל־ם (sh-l-m, wholeness) seed, making wholeness echo from Maachah’s ancestry to the last child named.
THE MEANING
Maachah’s place in this family line is visible through the four children she bears and their names. Abijah (אֲבִיָּה, Aviyah, “Yah is my father”) carries a claim about fatherhood, while Shelomith (שְׁלֹמִית, Shelomith, “peaceful, whole”) echoes the wholeness-root in her maternal grandfather’s name, Avshalom (אַבְשָׁלוֹם, Avshalom, “father of shalom, wholeness”). Birth and naming make this lineage present in the verse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A family line belongs to the father alone; here Maachah is named as the one who bears the four children.
THE ROOT
שְׁלֹמִית
Shelomith
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or sound.
שְׁלֹמִית (Shelomith, “peaceful, whole”) carries the שלם (sh-l-m, wholeness) family found inside אַבְשָׁלוֹם (Avshalom, “father of shalom, wholeness”), the name of Maachah’s father. The shared consonants let wholeness sound across the generations named here.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, completeness, peace.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the word-family echoed in both Shelomith and Avshalom.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
It makes the root’s sense of wholeness concrete beneath the names.
Avshalom: Father of shalom, wholeness.
אַבְשָׁלוֹם
His name appears in Maachah’s ancestry and shares the root carried by Shelomith.
וַתֵּלֶד
watteled
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear, bring forth, or beget.
“who bore” in this verse is watteled. The Hebrew verb וַתֵּלֶד (watteled, “and she bore”) makes Maachah the one bringing forth these four named children. The same root grows into words for a child and for generations, connecting one birth to the longer unfolding of a family line.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The children in the verse are the direct outcome named by the verb’s root.
toledot: Generations, descendants, family origins.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch extends the act of bearing into the genealogies that preserve a family’s continuation.
THE PATTERN
A family line moves forward through birth and remains legible in the names it carries.
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.And the women who were her neighbors called out a name for him, saying, A son is born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.Abraham brought forth Isaac, and Isaac brought forth Jacob, and Jacob brought forth Judah and his brothers.THE THREAD
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.Both passages use וַתֵּלֶד (watteled, “and she bore”), from ילד (yalad, “bring forth”). The shared verb links Maachah’s named children with the first named birth in Genesis, where a family line begins to take shape.
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